Lebanese Presidential Election: Postponement #18

Speaking of hiding in the toilet: the Lebanese crisis over choosing the country's next president, now in its 16th month, hit its latest hurdle today. An 18th postponement. This time Nabih Berri, the speaker of Parliament and a Shiite member of the opposition, didn't bother setting a date for the next attempt at choosing a replacement for Emile Lahoud, who stepped down in November at the end of a term that had itself been stretched a few years too many, thanks to Syrian bullying.

Syrian and Iranian bullying is preventing the crisis from finding its resolution. As Beirut's Daily Star reports, "The [Sunni and Christian] parliamentary majority, backed by the West and most Arab states, is demanding the immediate and unconditional election of the consensus candidate and commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces, General Michel Suleiman," who made his name in the defeat of quasi-al-Qaeda Palestinian renegades last September. The opposition, meanwhile, made up of Hezbollah Shiites and a break-away group of Maronite Christians headed by Gen. Michel Aoun, "backed by Syria and Iran, insists on reaching agreements on forming a national unity government and drafting a new electoral law for the 2009 elections before electing Suleiman."

The two sides have been going at it month after month, making a mockery of what's left of Lebanese democracy and leaving Lebanon's 4 million people dreading what could be the default outcome of the stalemate: return to civil war. So far, however, Hezbollah and its Christian counterparts appear more disgusted by the thought of war than by the habit of continually and pointlessly bickering. There's political convenience in the stand-off: it keeps all sides from losing face, even as Lebanon loses faith in itself.